The City Council of Minucciano, Italy, has named faculty member Jon Isherwood an Honorary Citizen in recognition of his work promoting the region through an art and technology initiative he’s been leading for the past five years.

Ariel Herwitz ’06, Floryn Honnet ’13, Rainer Hunt ’13, and Georgia Lassner ’09 are the inaugural class of a new residency for young alumni artists that was established at Bennington this year. Funded by a grant from an anonymous donor made in honor of faculty members Barry Bartlett and Jon Isherwood, the program invites recent graduates in sculpture and ceramics to live and work on campus for two- to four-week stints. In “studios” in Usdan Gallery, these four artists have had a chance to dive into their practice mostly uninterrupted, and current students have had the opportunity to interact with them in a variety of ways. Says Jon Isherwood, one of the designers of the residency, “It’s a very exciting moment for us in the Visual Arts to be able to bring back alumni and have them develop new work in the gallery. The premise of the residency has been to encourage experimentation. Complimenting this, the VA faculty have invited our alumni guests to visit classes and meet with students one on one.”

The fruits of the artists’ labors will be on view at Usdan Gallery from November 29 through December 8. They spoke with Aruna D’Souza about their student experiences, their approach to art making, and their experience being back on campus.

Twenty-six designs for a restaurant at the Peninsula Hotel in Beijing, developed by Bennington students, staff, and faculty, will be featured in an exhibition at the Beijing Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) at the end of this month, with a simultaneous exhibit in the Gllery at the hotel.

Faculty member in sculpture Jon Isherwood is featured in the new book Artist Boss: Anthony Caro's Studio Assistants and Issues of Legacy in British Sculpture, published by Wunderkammer Press. The book looks at the life and work of Sir Anthony Caro, who was a faculty member at Bennington College in the 1960s.

This summer, faculty member Jon Isherwood once again spearheaded a collaboration between the Digital Stone Project and Garfagnana Innovazione in Tuscany, focused on bridging the gap between art and technology. This is the fourth such collaboration between Isherwood and students from Bennington College, the Digital Stone Project, and the Italian incubator for the artisanal stone industry.

In a new project at the Usdan Gallery at Bennington College, artists, dancers, curators, students, and thinkers from China and the U.S. are turning the process of collaboration into a form of art. The gallery is open Tuesdays through Saturdays 1:00 to 5:00 pm; admission is free.

Co-organized by faculty member Jon Isherwood and Bennington Museum curator Jamie Franklin, 3D Digital: Here and Now is a collaboration between Bennington College and the Bennington Museum that highlights artists, designers, and manufacturers whose work exploits the potential of new technologies to push material practice. The exhibition runs through June 15.

Jon Isherwood’s “Sotol Duet” has been recognized by Americans for the Arts Public Art Network (PAN) Year in Review which annually recognizes outstanding public art projects that represent the most compelling work for the year from across the country.

Faculty member Jon Isherwood will be featured in an international exhibition of contemporary sculpture using robots to carve Tuscan marble. The show opens at The Museum of Sculpture and Architecture (MUSA) Pietrasanta, Italy on July 5, 2014.

Three large-scale sculptures by visual arts faculty member Jon Isherwood were unveiled last month at the Songzhuang Art Museum in Beijing, China. The pieces are sculpted from Indian red granite ("Prophecy"), China black granite ("The Move's On"), and white marble ("Swan Song"), and will be on view through the end of the year.

Faculty member Jon Isherwood was one of four American stone sculptors chosen to participate in a contemporary art exhibition in China that demonstrates a fusion of traditional carving techniques with technology that is—quite literally—on the cutting edge.

On Saturday June 21, 2014, faculty member Jon Isherwood joined other artists, sculptors, theorists, technologists, and curators to present work with new technologies and marble in conference on stone carving in the 21st century.